Alone or Together? Formal and Informal Network Formation in Transnational Advocacy

Lobbying strategies depend heavily on the nature of and the extent to which interest organizations build networks with other organizations. This is not different for lobbying during transnational negotiations. That is, transnational negotiations are often characterized by issue-linkages which require the support of encompassing coalitions or networks for any agreement to become immanent. Moreover, within networks actors may share resources, divide tasks and the structure or identity of a network can in itself be a political signal. Earlier research has shown that social movements that engage in transnational advocacy are heavily involved in different types of networks. Yet, far less is known about the propensity of business interests to rely on transnational alliances or the likelihood that business and non-business interests coalesce at the transnational level. To fill this gap in the literature, we seek to explain the inclination of business actors and NGOs to rely on networks when they participate in transnational conferences. For our empirical analysis, we use two datasets, namely a mapping of all organized interests that participated in WTO-Ministerial Conferences (since 1995, N=1,968) and the full set of interests that were active at UN Climate Conferences (N=6,655). For our empirical analysis we focus on both formal and informal networks. Regarding the first, for each organization at the MCs we analyze data on membership-ties - namely the interlocks between national and supranational organizations - which allows us to map formal network formation. For the informal networks we use two data sources. First, for a subset of countries (EU and US organizations) we searched for website links between organizations. Second, for groups active at the climate summits we analyzed how coalitions were formed at the moment of registering.